You need to hear this.

Facebook uploaded 1.5M contacts without permission

Happy almost Friday, everyone! Let’s get start things right with some hot gossip about our favorite tech giant, Facebook. Even the richest companies employing armies of developers can't seem to get security right. In their latest news, the company has shared 1.5 million users’ contact lists without their permission.

According to The Next Web:

“Following a report from Business Insider yesterday, the company confirmed it had uploaded more 1.5 million users’ contact lists without their permission when they signed up for the service starting in May 2016. According to BI, a security researcher noticed that Facebook was asking some users to enter the password for their email account when they’re making a new Facebook account. If they went ahead and entered the password, the social network displayed a message saying it was ‘importing your contacts,’ without a way for them to opt out.”

More juicy details: Facebook erased the notification text that tells users about the contact upload process, but they left in the code to carry out the task.

YouTube returns to FireTV

For all you FireTV owners out there, this is great news. YouTube is returning! This means you can once again watch silly cat videos via the uber-popular video service on your Amazon streaming device. Why is YouTube coming back? Just like Apple and Qualcomm earlier this week, Amazon and Google have finally settled their differences.

According to Ars Technica:

“Feuding tech giants Amazon and Google have come to an agreement on their streaming services. After over a year of absence, the official YouTube app will return to Amazon Fire TV devices and Fire TV Edition smart TVs. Google pulled the video streaming app in early 2018 after it could not strike a deal with the online retail giant surrounding the availability of its products and services.”

But there's more going on in the world than that.

Infocom game source code now available

This is pretty awesome - you can now download the source code for games like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Zork. You can start exploring these historic tech wonders at GitHub.

According to Ars Technica:

“The code was uploaded by Jason Scott, an archivist who is the proprietor of textfiles.com. His website describes itself as ‘a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them’—in particular those of the 1980s. He announced the GitHub uploads on Twitter earlier this week.”

The source code for these games should work on any modern operating system, seeing that it was written in an interpreted language that runs in a virtual machine (that I think works like much Java does), with interpreters available for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.

And you can't not know this.

Let’s admit it. Chucky of horror movie fame is pretty creepy, and his creators decided to make him a lot creepier to IT pros. In his new movie Child’s Play, he's an AI-powered doll that's able to control smart devices to do his evil deeds. That's one IoT device you definitely don't want on the network!

According to Engadget:

“Among the items Chucky, or Buddi as the doll is known here, can take charge of is a drone -- let's hope it's nothing like the kamikaze or shotgun-wielding ones developed in Russia. It looks like he'll be able to tap into connected cars and thermostats too, along with perhaps a lawnmower (definitely would not want to be the guy tied up in the path of that machine).”

I know I won’t be seeing this movie, but for all of you prospective movie-goers: beware. This movie may prevent you from feeling safe in your smart home, or even in your server room. Check out the preview video below for a taste of what this horror flick is all about.

This person is a verified professional.

I had the deluxe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on my Mac SE. It came with peril sensitive sunglasses, a "Don't Panic" button and "no tea just like real hitchhikers", however you were expected to know where your towel was. I never made it past the drinks dispenser and had more fun with Tetris and Risk

This person is a verified professional.

But there's more going on in the world than that.
Infocom game source code now available

This is pretty awesome - you can now download the source code for games like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxyand Zork. You can start exploring these historic tech wonders at GitHub.

According to Ars Technica:

“The code was uploaded by Jason Scott, an archivist who is the proprietor of textfiles.com. His website describes itself as ‘a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them’—in particular those of the 1980s. He announced the GitHub uploads on Twitter earlier this week.”

The source code for these games should work on any modern operating system, seeing that it was written in an interpreted language that runs in a virtual machine (that I think works like much Java does), with interpreters available for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Facebook uploaded 1.5M contacts without permission, Honestly I don't put any thing past them anymore. All they do is breach privacy and not care. And the kicker is you are the product, so they can do what they want with your information. Only way to stop it is just not use the service.

This person is a verified professional.

I always wondered how those InfoCom games worked. The "natural language" interpreter, while crude, was good enough to give the illusion that it understood what you were saying. I maybe finished ZORK once, never finished HHGTTG, but it did get me into reading the books and I'm not sorry for that at all. DON'T PANIC!

This person is a verified professional.

But there's more going on in the world than that.
Infocom game source code now available

This is pretty awesome - you can now download the source code for games like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxyand Zork. You can start exploring these historic tech wonders at GitHub.

According to Ars Technica:

“The code was uploaded by Jason Scott, an archivist who is the proprietor of textfiles.com. His website describes itself as ‘a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them’—in particular those of the 1980s. He announced the GitHub uploads on Twitter earlier this week.”

The source code for these games should work on any modern operating system, seeing that it was written in an interpreted language that runs in a virtual machine (that I think works like much Java does), with interpreters available for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.

This person is a verified professional.

Interesting! So reading the Terms of Service doesn't matter, since big social media companies can just violate them anyway! :D

Of COURSE reading the ToS matters! Haven't you ever seen South Park? Do you WANT Apple to make you into a human Cent-i-Pad?

On a more serious note, I'm glad to see that I'll be able to access YouTube on my Fire TV again. Having to use the browser to do it was irritating to say the least. Also, can't wait to watch Chucky! Love those movies.

This person is a verified professional.

I've always wanted to make my own text adventure. I played pretty much everything Infocom had back then. Great stuff... but with technological advances, could be so much better now. You can pack a lot of story in if you don't have to worry about graphics. :)

So YouTube is returning to FireTV. I wonder, will Prime Videos return to Chromecast? I've been looking at maybe going with something other than Roku. We're on our 3rd Roku and we've had some kind of problem with each. The 1st became so slow. The 2nd when you would pause a video and restart it, the sound would be off from the picture and you'd have to exit whatever app you were in and go back. And our current one the remote constantly disconnects itself from the Roku stick so you have to walk it up to the tv for a few seconds for it to be recognized again. So I'm not sure if I want to go with another Roku or switch to Chromecast or FireTV. I've always chosen Roku simply because of the Google/Amazon feud. But if that's over and their apps go back on each other's devices.... hmmm.

I've always wanted to make my own text adventure. I played pretty much everything Infocom had back then. Great stuff... but with technological advances, could be so much better now. You can pack a lot of story in if you don't have to worry about graphics. :)

Same here, I used to keep notebooks full of my own "text adventures" back in high school. Never got them in computer game format, but it was certainly fun to write! :-)

This person is a verified professional.

Ugh, Facebook. I wish that people would just go back to texting or IMing so I wouldn't be so tethered to this mess... but it's nearly impossible to convince people that some other site/app or just emailing/plain ol' text messaging, is going to be any better. The constant stupid things Facebook does are why I pretty much only share memes and WoW screenshots anymore. I'm sure some day I'll delete my profile, but I want to find something else that works for my friends so I don't get stuck in a social-medialess void.

This person is a verified professional.

Yo Tallman, you had one too? I had the A1200 (PAL) from when I was in the UK, moved here, went to Radioshack (when they still sold electronics, not just toys and cell phones) and got the power adapter so it wouldn't fry the PSU for my Amiga and played it here until a few years ago I sold it off with all games etc I had as well. ZeeWolf and ZeeWolf 2 ended up being my favorite games along with JetStrike which was my absolute favorite of all time fun game. I was more a flight sim sorta guy so had Combat Air Patrol as well, and then some platformers and FPS games, but flight sims even the Jetstrike arcade look was the most fun.

This person is a verified professional.

That was a nice collection, MichaelMTallman! Hitchhikers Guide and Bards Tale I and II!

Thanks! At least it was lol. I was more into playing Bards Tale than HHGTTG tbh, but it was all good stuff. I might have even kept my Bards Tale disks and a couple of the other adventure hack and slash games when I sold my stuff. My first "game" was Arctic Fox because, well, there was pretty much nothing for the Amiga in the mid-80's when I first got mine lol. I think Fire Power was the other game early on.